CLASS Leasing: Leasing Specialist Creed

As a leasing specialist you are the first contact for nearly every prospect that walks through the leasing office doors. It is important to be on your game with every single prospect, because there's no second chance at making a first impression.

With this in mind really concentrate on the little things this weekend:

Make sure that your balloons are out front and you are in the office ready to lease five to ten minutes before your scheduled time to be in the office. There's nothing wrong with being early.

Walk your tour routes to make sure that they are completely clean and there are no unforeseen surprises that could hamper a tour.

Check the model and show apartments to ensure that the lights are on, there aren't any little surprises hiding in the bathtub or cabinets and it smells fresh inside the apartment.

Right when you get into the office, search your community online to make yourself aware of any new information posted on any websites about your property.

Make sure to get 3-5 Craigslist ads up throughout the day in between taking tours and phone calls.

Put together an informative post for your property's Facebook page.

Get your key cards out from the previous days that still have follow-up phone calls that need to be made.

When the phone rings make sure to enthusiastically answer the phone, say your five questions verbatim and really make a true effort to build rapport with the prospect, so they will be not only more inclined to come visit you, but will also feel more comfortable leasing with you.

Hop up from behind your desk and greet every single person that walks through the door, so they immediately feel welcome and at home.

Take the time to fill out the entire key card in order for proper follow-up immediately following the tour.

Really sell your community to the prospect while on tour and nail your FBC's when inside the model apartment.

At the closing table really use your ten closes to get every prospect to lease and if they will not lease, absolutely aim for a 24 hour hold in order to get them back in the door tomorrow.

Complete your follow-up email and thank you letter the second the prospect walks out the door. In doing so, the tour will be fresh on your mind and the prospect will be taken aback by getting an email so soon after their tour.

At the end of the day, send your nightly email before you leave the office. There are many clients that are waiting to see how the day went and may be anxiously waiting for the daily numbers.

Make sure to call-in at your specified time.


All of these things are supposed to be done every single day, but really make an effort to go above and beyond of what you normally are expected of this weekend. If your goal is two leases this weekend, then aim for four. Don't give yourself an opportunity to look back on a day and think you may have got a lease if you did something differently. Make every tour count this weekend!

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: Google Presence

Multifamily Insiders hosted a great webinar earlier this week highlighting the importance of a property's Google presence. This webinar was spot-on, because when individuals "search" for a property online, they are 99% likely to search for the property using Google. "Google it" has all but replaced the phrase "search for it" when it comes to finding something online. Therefore, having a great presence on Google is imperative and this webinar does a great job offering tips to improve that presence.

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: RentMineOnline

RentMineOnline is catching on like wildfire throughout the apartment industry and is really revolutionizing the concept of resident referrals.

Resident referral is a great first line of defense for marketing purposes, because the marketing is done in-house and there are no sorts of gate keeper HR departments to get through. Whatever the monetary amount that is offered to residents for referring their friends and family, this number needs to be constantly engrained in the residents mind. Many residents don't understand that you really do get money for something as simple as referring a friend until they receive that first discount off of their rent. In steps RentMineOnline to simplify things even more for residents to get money for essentially doing nothing.

RentMineOnline accesses the social media realm for referrals by having residents sign up through website, which in turn allows RentMineOnline to begin the referral process through the residents social pages (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) Therefore if someone views a referral done by RentMineOnline on my Facebook profile and decides to live at my community, I will receive a referral bonus without even physically telling that individual to join my community! It's that easy. RentMineOnline has taken the simple concept of resident referral and made it even easier.

Here is a great write-up about RentMineOnline in Multifamily Executive.

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: Google +1

Google +1 is finally here and became active this past week for anyone with a Google account. I wrote a blog not too long ago about Google +1 and what exactly it entails, but there is still some grey area for some in regards to what its purpose is. Google released a great tutorial video that really breaks down the benefits of accessing Google +1 and how it is essentially their break through into the social realm of websites. The video can be found at the bottom of the linked webpage.

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: How Should A Facebook Page Be Used For An Apartment Community?

I have written a few blogs about general ideas on how to use a Facebook Page for an apartment community. First off, I cannot harp enough that a Faceboook Page is only as useful as you make it. If a property page is created and you think that it going to lead to more leases just because you created it, then you are going to be heavily disappointed.

A Facebook Page is designed with the purpose of getting residents involved and having a place where they can be connected to not only other residents, but also to management. In addition, a Facebook Page will also help to increase a property's SEO, because it is another site that other property specific sites can be linked to, which therefore is offering another venue for property exposure online. Although, just because it is a property specific page does not mean that it needs to be updated daily with information trying to sell the community. Keep in mind that people that "like" the property page do not want to constantly see on their Facebook walls information about your apartments for rent.

There is a general rule that an apartment community page needs to be a balanced ratio of 80/20 of general information to direct apartment community. General information can consist of anything relating to the city the community is in, helpful tips for apartment living, or just random tidbits of information, such as today and how it is national donut day! Tracey Lott Heitzman contributed a great article today on Multifamily Insiders that outlines the importance of making a Facebook Page interactive. Below I have highlighted her great topics for Facebook Page status updates and you can find the full blog here.

•Have fun with your profile picture and change it up often
•Post your You Tube videos
•Notify residents of upcoming concerts and events in your area
•Post interesting new jobs. I’ve seen a property management company that has a Twitter feed on their website with job postings that fit their demographics
•Post new movies out on DVD or to the theatre
•Start a 'Best of' list and have residents to vote
•Offer green cleaning tips
•Plan a Yahoo Sports Pick Em’ Group for the playoffs
•Offer exclusive discounts, coupons, and content (40% of FB users “like” Pages that give them deals)
•Partner with restaurants in the area and offer exclusive deals (I live in a condo community and the new restaurant across the street gives us 10% off!)
•Post a photo of a local restaurants dish and have a contest to have residents guess the dish and where it came from (offer a gift card to same restaurant)
•Advertise a time and place at the community and host a “Sweets in the Streets” where you hand out candy bars
•Post an events calendar to share with sister communities. Allow residents to participate among the communities
•Have monthly Birthday Parties and post to Facebook
•Have a yearly 'Birthday' for your community
•Reward residents and fans by helping them give to charity
•Recognize fans and select a “Fan of the Month”
•Become “Fans” of local business and post on their walls
•Use the Question feature to offer polls (more on this below)
•Contests are one of the most effective ways of keeping your Fans interested and engaged
•Introduce various competitions with giveaways
•Watch the comments/likes pour in with these status updates from Funny Status (not all are appropriate)
•Post trivia questions- people love to show off their knowledge
•Ask for opinions
•Encourage your Fans to share personal stories on a particular topic, like “my first apartment”
•Upload lots of photos from Resident Appreciation Events and be sure to “tag” your Fans

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: The Geosocial Universe

I am a big visual person whenever it comes to understanding the magnitude of anything relating to comparing numbers or data. Seeing a table, graph, chart, etc. for me just helps to understand the scope of data in relation to the comparable item numbers.

JESS3 Labs designed one of the more up-to-date and visually appealing models that I have truly seen in awhile. Per their site, "JESS3 Labs is a creative agency that specializes in data visualization" and they put together a terrific visual of the social media network database entitled "The Geosocial Universe." This infographic draws together the major hitters in the social media universe and compares them in total registered users in spherical orbit form with shading done to represent the fraction of users that access these social sites via mobile phone.

In addition to there being some new faces on this social media orbit, it should come as no surprise that the top two social sites are Facebook (629 million users) and Skype (663 million users). What is surprising data to me considering how reliant society has become on their mobile phones, I a guilty member as well, is how such a small fraction of Yahoo Mail, Hotmail and Gmail users actually check their mail via mobile. I would think that many people are like me in that I rely on my phone for talking, texting and email as the three main purposes, so how are the spheres of those three main email providers not more filled in? Regardless, JESS3 put together a great representation of our "Geosocial Universe" and the number of registered users will only increase as social media becomes more and more of an entity of its own.

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing

CLASS Leasing: The Best Resident Event Contest Finale!

Hopefully everyone took the time to enter the Resident Events and Peachtree Business Products competition to come up with the best and most creative resident event, because the finale is tomorrow afternoon! Everyone should make sure to visit Multifamily Insiders and sign up for the free webinar from 1:00 PM-2:00 PM Central Time to listen to the industry leader judges break down on their thoughts of each submission, as well as the winning resident event idea. This is a great opportunity to possibly pick-up a resident event idea for your community that could be used in the near future. As of today there have been a total of 85 submissions, so it is sure to be a great opportunity being a part of this webinar!

Enjoy!

CLASS Leasing